Month: March 2016

Owning My Body Update

It’s time for my “Owning My Body” Quarterly review. Back in January I set out to pursue some goals related to my health. The perception of an affiliate manager is a big, muscular dude who works out and has a V-shaped torso. That isn’t quite me, but I think it’s a good model to aim for.

In my previous owning my body post I mentioned how it’s 2-3x harder for me to lose weight due to a genetic cell imbalance. Well I’m proud to say that despite my misgivings about that recent diagnosis, I have made some nice progress on my body weight and the care I put into owning my body.

My Weight Update

As you may recall, this is my weight fluctuation during the year 2015:

As the end of the chart you can see things starting to decrease. Here is my progress from December 1, 2015 – March 15, 2016:

That dotted line was actually set to 200 pounds, but since I reached that goal around the end of February I moved it to 185 pounds.

One of my big take-aways from 2015 was that I always gained the most weight when I wasn’t measuring my weight on a scale and logging it in my Fitbit. I think this is the same problem people have with credit cards: being afraid to look at the balance which accumulates month by month until it’s unbearably high. One last look at the weight chart, from January 1, 2015 – March 15, 2016, with the 2016 portion in the blue box:

Today I’m 196 pounds.

What Does 27 Pounds Lighter Feel Like?

Well it feels like responsibility, to be honest! But it also feels like I’m owning my body, which gives me a satisfied overall sense that I’m on the right track.

Carbohydrate Management

I think cutting out the potatoes, cereal and breads has been the easiest part.

With the keto diet I’ve been able to avoid sugar cravings. This is something that’s really revolutionized my ability to stay on track for a long period of time.

I still do allow myself a few pleasant goodies, such as Lindt 85% cocoa chocolate and some black pepper sea salted cashews. But I strive to keep my daily carb intake within a certain threshold.

With my goal of 48 grams of carbs eaten per day, I’ve been pretty good. I aim for a 10% carbs, 55% fats and 35% protein diet, although that’s not always doable. In the last 7 days I think I did 14-15% carbs except for one day where it was 9%.

I’m gonna have to be very good to get down to 190 pounds. And keeping it down is going to be even harder.

Electrolytes! What Are Those?

Back in January I wasn’t as strictly Keto as I am now, and so my electrolytes didn’t need to be monitored too carefully. Now they do.

Electrolytes come down to three nutrients that the body needs to get otherwise things start to shut down:

Magenesium

Potassium

Sodium

These are the main ones.

Without an ample supply of these electrolytes I experience EXTREME constipation. I’m not talking just the regular kind… I’m talking the kind that’s so painful that you want to avoid going to the bathroom. It’s really weird… and definitely worth making sure it never happens (again, heh…).

I had set a goal of 4000mg of potassium per day, but I’ve realized that unless I plan on eating an entire head of cauliflower each day,

I’m not going to get even close.

As long as I get at least 1K/day, I’m fine. I’ve found some pretty nifty foods that help boost up my potassium each day.

For emergencies (i.e. I didn’t get plan to eat them throughout the day) I use these little sachets, each has 400mg of Potassium and 100mg of Sodium. A box has about 30 of them. Probably better to get the box, because I usually end up getting them one at a time at Whole Foods for $0.99 each… or at Ambrosia, a health store in Toronto where they go for about $0.75.

Probably the best deal out there is to just pick up a box on Amazon here. You totally want to avoid the worst constipation of your life if you’re going to be eating keto, or cutting out carbs from your diet.

The Good, The Bad…

Being in control of my body has been great, but it does take quite some time. In the end, I think it’s worth it. I’ve been enjoying my progress so far using tools like FitBit and myFitnessPal. They still require work and can be frustrating when I eat garbage all day… those are the most important days to log in the system so I can correct course promptly.

In terms of my goals for 2016 however, I haven’t been playing very much Squash or Badminton and my 7-day average hasn’t really been close to 10,000 steps.

However! I have been able to maintain a weight below 200 pounds which is making the other 2 goals feel less significant in the grand scheme of things.